About the Project
This fully funded PhD project offers an exciting opportunity to work at the cutting edge of environmental monitoring and data science. You will explore how we can predict groundwater contamination and groundwaterdriven flooding in Chalk landscapes that support unique stream ecosystems.
A key part of the project involves deploying and using Smart Sensors to continuously monitor natural indicators of water quality, such as organic matter fluorescence and turbidity. These highresolution datasets will allow you to uncover patterns that cannot be detected with traditional monitoring approaches.
You will then apply Advanced Signal Processing to link these waterquality signals with rainfall, streamflow behaviour, and pressures from land use, geology, climate, drainage infrastructure and wastewater discharges. This combination of stateoftheart sensing and data analytical techniques will help reveal how and when contamination and drought or flooding events are likely.
By the end of the project, your findings will contribute to improved forecasting tools that can protect groundwater supplies, stream ecosystems, and critical infrastructure, supporting early warning systems and smarter environmental management.
This is an ideal project for students excited by environmental science, hydrology, data analytics or sensing technology, and who want to make a meaningful contribution to realworld water challenges.
Rationale: Chalk catchments are the UK’s most important groundwater resource, supplying drinking water and supporting rare chalkstream ecosystems. They are also highly vulnerable to groundwater flooding, drought, and contamination. Similar challenges exist across northern Europe (France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark). Better understanding of such systems can protect public water supplies, rivers, and critical infrastructure.
Multiple pollutants can move through Chalk quickly via fractures and conduits:
- Pathogens that threaten drinking water and stream health
- Particles and microplastics (e.g., from tyre wear) that damage river habitats
- Chemicals (pesticides, pharmaceuticals, PFOS/“forever chemicals”, hydrocarbons, heavy metals)
- Nutrients that drive algal growth and degrade water quality
Chalk catchments are also commonly affected by groundwater flooding and droughts. How these risks play out depends on catchment structure and land use, including karstic pathways and unsaturated zone thickness, cover sediments, farming practices, road drainage, and wastewater discharges.
What makes this project unique
- Smart Sensor Networks (cuttingedge field instrumentation)
- You will deploy an integrated network of instream and borehole sensors such as fluorescence probes (e.g., PME CFluor) and distributed fibreoptic sensing (DAS) to continuously track natural indicators of water quality (e.g., natural organic matter fluorescence as a proxy for sewagederived proteins, turbidity for sediment load, and temperature). These highfrequency, spatially distributed measurements capture signals that traditional sampling often misses.
- Advanced Signal Processing (turning data into forecasts)
- You will apply modern timeseries techniques—Fourier analysis, Impulse Response Functions / crosscorrelation analysis—to connect rainfall and streamflow to waterquality signals. This allows you to reveal pathways, lags, and “memory effects” in the catchment and to forecast when contamination events or groundwaterdriven flooding is likely.
Together, these approaches view the catchment as a system that transforms meteorological inputs (rainfall/evaporation) into observable outputs (fluorescence, turbidity, temperature). Reading those outputs in real time gives a powerful earlywarning capability.
Research goals:
Deploy sensors and validate data
Deploy fluorescence probes (e.g., PME CFluor or Cyclops-7) and DAS fibreoptic sensors in monitoring wells at the River Chess catchment*. Run targeted sampling campaigns and laboratory fluorescence analyses available at the British Geological Survey to validate insitu signals.
Process and analyse timeseries data
- Clean and preprocess rainfall, streamflow, and waterquality records
- Apply Fourier transforms, Impulse Response Functions / crosscorrelation analysis to quantify lag times, signal persistence, and event signatures
Perform geospatial analysis to relate response functions and lags to land use, geology (e.g., unsaturated zone thickness, presents of claywithflints cover sediments), soil moisture, road/drainage networks, and wastewater discharges.
Produce guidance for catchment management and infrastructure protection
*The River Chess Catchment is one of the three study catchments in the UKRI Floods and Droughts Infrastructure Scheme (FDRI) , which aims to integrate flood risk management and sustainable management of water resource systems.
What you’ll gain
- Field skills: Installing and maintaining smart sensors; borehole and stream sampling; designing validation campaigns
- Data & computing skills: Timeseries analytics, signal processing, geospatial analysis, and coding for environmental data science
- Domain expertise: Hydrogeology of Chalk systems, contaminant transport, and earlywarning/forecasting for water risk
- Realworld impact: Collaborate with stakeholders (e.g., Water Companies, Environment Agency) to design outputs and guidance they can use in decisionmaking
This project is ideal if you are excited by environmental science/hydrology and data analytics, enjoy a mix of fieldwork and data analysis, and want your research to shape realworld water management. Backgrounds that fit well include environmental science, geology/geophysics/earth science, geography, civil/environmental engineering, physics, data science, or related fields. Training will be provided.
You will benefit from the strong research environment within the School of Earth, Environment and Sustainability and its Institute of Applied Geoscience (IAG). The IAG conducts worldleading research across applied geophysics, rock mechanics, engineering geology, hydrogeology, petrophysics and geomechanics, sedimentology, and planetary exploration. The School’s broader research landscape encompasses major centres relevant to this project such as water@leeds, the Priestley Centre for Climate Futures, and crossfaculty initiatives tackling environmental and geotechnical challenges, thus providing further opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration.
To apply for this project you will need to make a formal application for research degree study through the University’s website. You will need to create a login ID with a username and PIN.
- For ‘Application type’ please select ‘Research Degrees – Research Postgraduate’.
- The admission year for this project is 2026/2027 Academic Year.
- You will need to select your ‘Planned Course of Study’ from a drop-down menu. For this project, scroll down and select PhD Earth and Environment Full-time’.
- The project start date for this project is 1st October 2026, please use this as your Proposed Start Date of Research.
- Please state clearly in the research information section that you wish to be considered for EPSRC DLA: Water Quality and Flood Risk in Chalk Landscape and Prof. Jared West as your proposed supervisor.
You will be required to provide a personal statement which outlines your interest in the project, why you have chosen it and how your skills map onto the requirements.
Funding Notes
We are offering a fully funded scholarship to study the project: Water Quality and Flood Risk in Chalk Landscapes: Integrating Smart Sensor Networks and Advanced Signal Processing, at the School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds for one UK status candidate. The funding covers UK tuition fees as well as a UKRI matched maintenance stipend (currently £20,780 in 2025/26) per year, for three years, subject to satisfactory progress.
Applications are open to Home (UK) applicants.
If you are unsure whether you are eligible for UK fees/funding, please see our fee assessment page.
